I am disabled. There, I said it. According to the U.S Census Bureau, around one in five people are disabled. Despite this statistic, it is something rarely admitted, and if it is, only to close friends. I don’t constantly think of myself as disabled. It’s not something actively present in my mind or lurking on the edge of my consciousness. I’m lucky about that – I’m lucky I have teachers who support me and the accommodations I need. I know I am disabled in a technical sense; I have a 504 that allows me to type when everyone else is writing by hand. It is something that I am used to, like having brown hair or pale skin: I have dysgraphia, a disability. Although, it took me a long time to get comfortable with ot. Discovering that I was disabled was a revelation, and not a welcome one.
Bad handwriting is something that has haunted me for years. When I was a child, it didn’t matter if my handwriting was illegible. Most children’s handwriting is like that and it wasn’t like what I wrote mattered that much anyways. The problem was that while most people’s handwriting got better, mine just got worse. I could do a few sentences and keep it legible, but no matter how hard I tried I inevitably lost control and ended up with messy half-done letters when I wrote anything longer. No matter how hard I tried, I was unsuccessful. During freshman year, my English teacher made me come into class to read my quiz out loud. That was the first time I had to come in outside of class, and it just spiraled down from there.
At the beginning of sophomore year, my teacher told us all of our tests would have a handwritten component – the short answer section. I felt my heart sink. I knew that my handwriting would be a problem. She explained that it was practice for the AP exam at the end of the year. She also mentioned dysgraphia. I thought it was funny and sounded a bit like me – but it couldn’t be because I wasn’t disabled. But I was. My teacher took a look at my first test and gave it back to me with a note that said “See me” and a smiley face. I appreciated the smiley face, but I was still upset. She didn’t even bother trying to grade my loose, scrawling handwriting. She told me she could not read what I had written. I already loved that class and thought I had done a great job on the test; I had studied hard and really tried my best answering. I had even used my best handwriting! My teacher said she thought I had dysgraphia, dyslexia’s lesser-known cousin. When she let me read my test out loud, I went from a D to a B. It was really nice of her to let me read it out, but I knew that this was not a long-term solution.
Thankfully, she also set up a dysgraphia test for me which confirmed the diagnosis. At first, I was terrified. The idea of being disabled was startling. I felt like I had walked off the edge of the cliff. I had not changed, but I felt like my perception of myself was changing from able to unable. I felt like what I had known about myself was wrong. It was also a realization.To me, trying to keep in mind the shape of the letter, the word, the spelling of the letter and what I was trying to say – while keeping it neat – was impossible. I tried for years to do it right, thinking “I’m not just trying hard enough or, everyone else can do this, why can’t I?” It was hard, looking at something that was so easy for everyone else – so simple to them but to me practically impossible. As much as I wanted to reject the idea that I was disabled, I couldn’t. It made too much sense. It was awkward and uncomfortable trying to change my self image and even worse was telling teachers. The first time I typed, I felt entirely too conspicuous, like every time I hit the keys it said, “This is something Rachel can’t do – behold her incompetence. She needs to use a computer because she is stupid and can’t write well.” I hated being the only one with an open computer. The backlit screen felt like a bullseye.
I got used to it, though. I read up on what dysgraphia was online, trying to figure out a way to put into words what was so hard for me and so easy for everyone else. I got better at explaining to teachers who didn’t know about it – and was surprised by just how many teachers did. I realized that nobody else cared that much about what I was doing, that most of it was in my head. It got easier. However, I still have trouble thinking of myself as disabled. I don’t feel that way. I feel like Rachel. I feel the same way I always have, but I am glad to have the diagnosis now. By getting the diagnosis, I became less disabled. I no longer have to think about it constantly. When I had to handwrite everything, it was a disability because I was not on the same level as everyone else. It is because I now have the 504 that I can keep thinking of myself the way I do. I am lucky though, the accommodation I need is relatively simple. Even so, my experiences with dysgraphia have made me even more certain that everyone has a right to the tools they need to succeed. My accommodations set up the world for me; if I don’t have to handwrite anything than it doesn’t matter that I can’t write neatly. That is why accommodations are important. They open up the world, make it so the disability doesn’t matter.